Wanting Out
The rare sunshine of a stormy summer.
Greta, Gwenda, leave their checkouts,
slink from their supervisors, for a tea break fag.
By the pathway’s bench, they watch a cat in sun.
Basking, she’s found a cardboard carton,
16 by 4-ounce packs, somesuch,
has squeezed within, but then wants out.
So then that cat (the tart)
slinks her hips, wriggles her kitten’s butt,
is out, breasting the sunshine.
Then the girls have to scurry, break done,
as the cat goes back in the carton, slinks out again.
That cat wants in, wants out,
that cat gets in, gets out. The tart.
Robert Nisbet’s most recent collections are Downtrain (short stories, Parthian, 2004) and Merlin’s Lane (poems, Prolebooks, 2011)